Page 23 of Tamed By her Duke

She was right. It was very irksome.

He didn’t know why he didn’t just leave. She was fine. He knew that now. She was an absolute lunatic, no doubt, sitting here in the dark, looking at dusty old pictures. But she was safe.

He slid down the far wall of the gallery instead until he was seated beside her.

She looked back up at the portrait. Caleb looked at his wife instead. Her nose was a pert little slope, and, from this angle, he could see how her bottom lip poked out farther than the top. She bit it as she looked at the portrait and, like it had in his study when she’d challenged him, it made him wonder what it tasted like.

“What are you doing?” he asked her again.

The sharp cut of her eyes sideways gave her a very different look than she’d held moments before. Where she’d seemed like a virginal innocent, in that simple white gown and with that plait, she now looked like one of the trickster fae, the kind that lured men off paths and into their doom.

“Not bothering you,” she said again, this time more pointedly.

“Lass,” he said tiredly. “Just answer the question, will ye?”

She sighed, as though he was the one being ridiculous.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “And sitting alone in my room seemed like a good way to ensure that I’d never fall back asleep again.”

“So ye…decided to come look at that fellow?” he asked skeptically.

The portrait was one of those wretched pre-Renaissance things, where faces all looked like horrifying, lumpy creature that wished to murder you. Or possibly Caleb’s ancestor was just ugly. Either way, the image was all dark colors and haughty disapproval. The main color in the image came from a massive crucifix. The man was praying in a distinctly judgmental manner.

“This is the kind of thing that helps ye get back to sleep? I have to say, lass, if it is, I’m near certain that’s grounds for annulment.”

Her head pivoted toward him with deliberate slowness.

“Did you just makea joke?” She couldn’t have sounded more shocked if he’d sprouted wings and flown.

“Ye daenae need to sound so shocked,” he said, oddly put out.

She snorted. It was unladylike and oddly charming.

“Don’t I? Sir, you are many things, but you have not yet revealed yourself to be the soul of wit.”

“I thought ye English lasses were meant to be sweet and demure,” he complained. “I feel I’ve been sold a false bill of goods. Promised roses and gotten thorns or the like.”

“Or the like,” she echoed, looking positively incredulous. “Goodness—is this you trying to betactful? You’re worse at it than you are at making jokes.”

“Ye might be more gracious! I’ve taken myself out of my warm, nice bed to come see if ye were all right. And what do I get?”

“The thorns,” she interjected before he could answer his own question. She was starting to look highly pleased with herself.

Well, fair play—she was quick, he’d give her that.

“Just so,” he agreed.

The silence that hung between them next wasn’t the same as the other silences they’d shared. It wasn’t quite comfortable, but it was closer. Grace turned back to the wall of portraits.

“I can’t help but notice,” she said after a long, quiet moment, “that there seem to be some gaps in your gallery.”

She would have been blind not to notice. When he’d taken over the title, Caleb had taken the fifty or so frames and left about four. The spots where they’d hung, some for centuries, were obvious marks in the sun-faded marks they’d left behind, even in the dark.

“Is that really what ye want to discuss?” It was a diversion;hehad no interest in ever speaking of his antecedents with his wife. She was here to provide the future of the line. The past was none of her concern. “My lineage?”

He thought, for a heartbeat, that he’d broken the fragile peace between them with the comment, but when she looked at him, her gaze was curious—not combative, like it had been for so much of their acquaintance, nor horribly flat, as it had grown in the instant before she left his study, earlier that evening.

“And if I do?” she asked.

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